Zero Labs Helps Companies Power Their Value Chains with Renewables and Prove It

The U.S. SEC’s proposed rule on climate-related disclosures and U.S. EPA’s new guidance on procuring renewables on behalf of others elevates the opportunity for companies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across their value chains

Every company has a “value chain” that includes suppliers and customers. These value chains represent a large source of greenhouse gas emissions under what is known as “Scope 3” in the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. While companies have made significant progress with procuring carbon-free electricity to power their offices, factories, and data centers to reduce their indirect emissions from electricity (“Scope 2”) toward zero, companies have struggled to find solutions to decarbonize their value chains. Until now!

Companies may soon have greater incentive to reduce the Scope 3 value chain emissions: earlier this year, the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed a new rule on carbon-related disclosures. Upon the SEC’s adoption of this proposed rule, in addition to reporting Scope 1 (direct on-site emissions) and Scope 2 emissions, many public companies will be required to disclose their Scope 3 emissions publicly from suppliers and customers if their Scope 3 emissions are sizable and/or if the company has a Scope 3 emissions reduction target. This disclosure will likely motivate many companies to procure renewables on behalf of their value chains to reduce associated emissions.

Companies also now have clearer guidance on how they can procure, retire, and allocate renewables to reduce value chain emissions. Last month, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published new guidance about procuring renewable energy on behalf of others. The EPA guidance details how companies can procure, retire, and allocate energy attribute certificates like U.S. renewable energy certificates (RECs) across different scenarios that involve multiple value chain partners, from downstream suppliers to upstream customers. It also provides clarity about how companies can unlock the vast potential of value chains to increase demand for renewables across the globe.

Zero Labs helps companies reduce their Scope 3 emissions to be reported to the SEC and achieve company-specific sustainability goals in line with EPA guidance using advanced technology tools that streamline the renewables procurement process and deliver proof of decarbonization in a radically transparent way

We do this by:

• ☀️ Procuring standardized carbon-free electricity in the form of standardized RECs in the United States, Guarantees of Origin (GOs) in the European Union, and International RECs (I-RECs) in 50+ countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East in large batches;
• 🔒 Canceling (i.e., retiring) the purchased REC, GO, and I-REC batches on legacy issuing body and registry systems to remove these certificates from the market so they cannot be resold, providing quality assurance and avoidance of double counting;
• 🍰 Tokenizing and fractionalizing the canceled batches of RECs, GOs, and I-RECs as non-fungible tokens (NFTs), where details about the NFT batch, blockchain network in use, etc. are included in the cancellation notes in the REC, GO, or I-REC issuing body and registry systems;
• ⚡️Delivering NFTs to value chain partners based on their measured or estimated energy use — however large or small these partners may be — in line with the U.S. EPA guidance, providing a reportable audit trail to verifies decarbonization and assure avoidance of double counting;
• 🏅 Proving use of renewables to power value chains by integrating and communicating evidence of renewable energy procurement into human readable user interfaces (UIs) to customers, investors, shareholders, and stakeholders.

The main benefits to companies for using Zero Labs’ web2 and web3 technology tools include

• reducing emissions to meet their climate-related targets,
• better attracting and retaining customers,
• and showcasing industry leadership to investors and policymakers

The case for value chain decarbonization is arguably strongest for companies in digitally native industries — meaning any company whose core business lives on the web like web-based apps — because these companies likely have outsized Scope 3 emissions compared to their Scope 1 and 2 emissions, external (or internal) climate goals, and a customer base that values (i.e., is willing to pay for) climate action.

Please 📩 contact us if you want to learn more about how to power your company and your value chain with renewables following leading industry practices and demonstrate climate leadership.